Contracts: Govt, Bunge lock horns

Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee deputy chairman Deo Filikunjombe speaks during one of the House team’s briefings.  PHOTO | FILE 

By Alex Bitekeye,The Citizen Reporter

In Summary

• A House team wants mining contracts, but the government says that won’t be possible for now

 Dar es Salaam. The Ministry of Energy and Minerals has directed the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) not to handover to the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) the Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) as requested by the latter, pending investors’ approval.

On the other hand, TPDC indicated in the letter submitted yesterday that it needed more time before submitting the contracts because they are huge and that it would take sometime to photocopy them.

This was revealed yesterday by PAC’s deputy chairman Deo Filikunjombe, who told reporters that PAC had received a letter from TPDC which says that they have notified investors, requesting their approval before submitting them to the House team.

Earlier, it was noted that the audit of the PSAs was done by TPDC and handed over to the minister, Prof Sospeter Muhongo, who until now has the report.

On Monday PAC chairman Zitto Kabwe ordered that the report should be brought to the Committee by Tuesday’s end of working hours.

“Yes, we ordered them to submit the audit report of the PAS. Today, we have received a letter saying that they have been directed by the minister to seek the go-ahead from investors,” said Mr Filikunjombe.

According to him, the Act which established the Parliamentary Accounts Committee provided that the committees are privileged to request any documents apart from those which the president has identified to be secret and which are mainly security documents.

“Now we are wondering as to why we have been told this concerning the PAS’s report. We are waiting till the end of today’s (yesterday) working hours for their response,” said Mr Filikunjombe.

In September 2012, the Committee ordered a re-audit of the 26 contracts, something which it did and submitted the reports to the minister who is in-charge of the docket, whereby they were ordered to detail what they had done on the seven PSA’s.

“Furthermore, you should give reasons on the headway they have made in auditing the remaining 19 PSA’s,” directed Mr Zitto Kabwe, who yesterday afternoon wrote on his Facebook page that PAC has started a parliamentary process against the TPDC for rejecting to submit the PSAs.